I Can't Help but Notice

We've had a few tests so far and we're getting them back all graded and everything, and I've realized something:

When the students here ask each other what grade they got, it's not to see whose is better, it's not for bragging rights. The real question is, "Did you understand the test/what we've been doing in this class?" which is indirectly checking who could use some help and who you might want to study with next time. The thing about No Child Left Behind is that the "children," a loosely used term in my opinion, can look out for each other. It's a lot more efficient for a classroom to look out for its own kids and make sure they're there than for the principal to walk around and take role at the beginning of every class himself, and likewise more efficient for the teacher or even the students themselves to grade homework or classwork than sending it all to some plant in who-knows-where that does some *magical* process to come up with a way to grade a brain, what we're supposed to be learning every year, semester, day. I cannot tell you what I will learn each day, only the subjects of the classes I will be attending. I couldn't have know the day I learned to ride a bike with no handlebars that I would finally get it that day. I have gone to the same lessons as my peers for many years and we have definitely not picked up the same things. Whether it's a personal choice, what a person learns, or simply a result of how their brain works combined with how the lesson is taught, I couldn't tell you for sure. But not all brains work the same -- some write, some draw, some sing, some connect the dots -- so why do we try to teach them the same? Teach the teachers to explain in drawings and words, or any visual at all, teach them to be interested in how this year's students learn, differentiate the teaching method a little each year (it makes the worksheets harder to Google). Put some money into the teaching system, and not in tuition, take the tax money out of all these new wars and political drama (many of which are real problems regardless of whether we treat them as such), and invest more in the people who will grow up and be able to solve them and your money issues. Put music programs back in elementary schools, don't force them but present it as an opportunity for multilingualism (it is another language, I hope you know that), or make it cultural or whatever makes you feel like it has "learning value" *(or whatever it could possibly be so lacking in that got it cut entirely). Teach kids everything you find good in life, show them what it is to love what you do (they may know more about it than you do but it helps to reinforce these things). I hear it all the time, "Growing up sucks." It doesn't have to!